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With the number of women’s colleges nationwide dropping from 200 to just 47 over the past 50 years, it’s no surprise that people are beginning to reevaluate their purpose in contemporary times.

The importance of having a feminist space -- particularly for schooling -- was more pronounced 100 years ago, when women still lacked basic suffrage rights in the United States, let alone access to higher education. Although gender equality in America has undeniably improved, it’s still undeniably imperfect.

From vocational schools to liberal arts schools to HBCU schools, America has the full spectrum when it comes to tailored educational institutions. Isn’t there still a place for schools that emphasize female progress?

By attending a women’s college, females are driven to tackle traditionally male-dominated areas in academics and clubs. The argument that these female students are living in a competition-free oasis that does not represent the “real world” undermines the fact women certainly have one another to compete with! Choosing to attend a women’s school is the opposite of “comfortable” because it challenges students to step outside of gender norms and engage in new leadership roles.

Elisabeth Pfeiffer, Huffington Post contributor and fellow Scripps College student, recently blogged about how her undergraduate experience has provided her with leadership opportunities that she may not have had access to at a co-ed school. “Women's colleges instill a sense of leadership in students. Graduates of women's colleges comprise more than 20% of women in Congress, and represent 30% of a Businessweeklist of rising women in corporate America,” Pfeiffer explains. Given that only 2% of American female college graduates attended women’s schools, these percentages are significant.

Executive director of the American Council for Co-Educational Schooling, Rebecca Bigler, would like to see women’s colleges accept male applicants, so as not to perpetuate gender discrimination -- “the very practice that such schools would like to minimize and prevent." She supports women’s colleges taking an all-inclusive stance by welcoming males and females, as HBCU schools welcome applicants of all races while celebrating Black history and advancement. Bigler’s reasoning resonates with some, but many students at women’s schools find great value in having an exclusively female student body.

In her 2009 Forbes article, “Why Women’s Colleges Are Still Relevant,” Heidi Brown explains why it may be useful to keep women’s colleges female-only. “Alumnae say their experiences gave them a singular benefit: learning and living among a select group of intelligent, ambitious women.” For some students, harboring an exclusively female environment is an important stimulant.

Claremont McKenna freshman, Shannon Miller, voiced her opinions about the role of women’s colleges on her school’s forum this week, prompting debate among students in the consortium, which includes Scripps – Claremont’s college for women.

“I don’t believe that the way to close the gender gap is to hide out in a college full of other women, collectively agonizing over society’s sexist underpinnings and rallying around the energizing but vague bastion of the feminist cause,” Miller writes.

Having attended a women’s college, I don’t see my experience that way. Students at women’s colleges tend not to be a self-pitying group with a vague focus, but rather a highly motivated bunch of informed females.

A women’s college is not a place where students “hide out to collectively agonize” over gender issues. It’s a place where students encourage one another to be educated about feminist history. It’s a place where students dare to defy gender norms. It’s a place where students come to engage in leadership roles that they may not otherwise have had access to.

Physical and social separation from men is not the goal of a women's college; today almost all are in consortiums or close proximity to co-ed colleges. The goal is to foster a community in which women have greater access to engage in a variety of opportunities. Of course women can rise to leadership roles in co-ed environments too. Attending a women's college is simply one of many avenues -- a fit for some and not others -- by which to reach the mutual goal of all females: social equality.